This application is an improvement upon applicants' U.S. Pat. No. 4,225,031 issued Sept. 30, 1980 and entitled ARTICLE ORIENTATION DEVICE.
This prior art application forms, in the opinion of the applicants, the best art available as concerned with devices for the orientation of ears of corn to insure their proper feeding arrangement to a kernel stripping or cutting device. The art that was considered in the prosecution of this previous application and this application included patents to Moulder, U.S. Pat. No. 3,224,554; Walker, U.S. Pat. No. 2,973,548; Ross, U.S. Pat. No. 3,268,057; Sterling, U.S. Pat. No. 3,726,385; Liberty, U.S. Pat. No. 3,061,027; and Wallace et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,187,545. These prior art patents were concerned with various aspects of orientation but were primarily governed with the orientation of articles which were of a common shape and size or which provided exterior elements which would allow grasping of the same for the determination of a specific position prior to orientation. The Wallace patent is directed to corn cob orientation but provides no double wheeled arrangement and the claims of the patent are particularly directed to the radiation detection beams for determining position. The applicants' device as disclosed herein includes a more positive feed control for rapidly feeding ears of corn for the stripping of ther kernels thereon in a metered fashion wherein the articles being fed are not of a constant nor positive continuous shape and with means to insure that clogging of the machine will not occur.
The standard operation of orientation of ears of corn is now manually performed. Manual operation will, over a long period of time, only result in the feeding of approximately sixty to eighty ears of corn per minute into a cutter. With the applicants' device, the ears are automatically fed into the cutter device and it has been found that this combination may more than triple the manual operation.